Frontiers Is The World’s Super Publisher. It Is Also Super Slow!

PH agriculture needs researches done to generate new or improved technologies or systems of production, processing, even marketing. However, before they become publicly useful, the research results will have to be published, making technical publications so necessary.

Frontiers is a super publisher with 79 international journals (see my essay, “Calling For Open Science Revolution[1]!” (30 May 2020, THiNK Journalism). But it is super slow when publishing!

In the Facebook image above, it will take forever before the research manuscripts are ready for publishing.

It breaks my heart that Frontiers needs 90 days to review a paper, then decide whether to publish it or not!

If I were the Editor In Chief of a journal, the simultaneous review of 10 manuscripts would have taken just 10 days, authors’ revisions another 5 days, and the issue would have come off the press on the 20^th day, via print-on-demand publishing.

Gearoid O Faolean, Yasmin Dahesh & Marieke Heineke explain the 90-day Frontiers’ review process; I count 8 steps:

(1)   Submission of manuscript.

You register an account at Frontiers and submit your manuscript online, with supporting materials.

(2)   Initial Validation.

Frontiers does a range of checks, including confirming that your study had ethical approval and copyright permissions.

(3)   Editor appointed.

A handling editor is appointed. For any concerns about your paper, s/he contacts the editorial office.

(4)   Reviewers appointed.

If the editor thinks your paper is ready for review, reviewers are invited.

(5)   Feedback to author

The reviewers read and give feedback to you as author.

(6)   Interactive review

In a Frontiers’ online review forum, you, reviewers and editors collaborate to improve the manuscript.

(7)   Author response

You are then prompted to address all or any specific comments raised.

(8)   Final checks

In the ‘Final Validation’ stage, your paper is reviewed to see if the standards have been met, including absence of conflicts of interest. Your manuscript is then accepted.

Frank A Hilario, Editor:

Assigning 3 days each of the 8 steps listed, the review period should only be 24 days!

I now suspect how the Frontiers staff handle the papers – they print out everything and do their review on paper! My clue is this line:

(After approval), our colleagues in the production team will start typesetting your manuscript.

Typesetting means the manuscript will be worked upon again & again: typed, proofread, text-formatted, page-layouted, copyread, then sent to press. My God, I suppose the originals of those manuscripts were submitted as soft copies, and therefore should have been reviewed and edited onscreen and not on paper, after which desktop publishing, DTP, is done, via software, no retyping necessary, and then off to press.

What all that tells me is the Frontiers has not maximized the powers of the Digital Age! I am the Editor In Chief who himself did the DTP with the Philippine Journal of Crop Science, each issue taking about 30 days, and made it ISI. (See superimposed image above.)

(Frontiers, need a DTP demonstration by an Editor In Chief? Email me: frankahilario@gmail.com. No initial charge.)@517

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[1]https://ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com/2020/05/calling-for-open-science-revolution.html